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Oil futures drunk-trading incident
- bananapear 6y agoThe Guardian story cited on this page says he made the trades whilst drunk at home. Regulators now demand that controlled functions are performed from a registered premises and controls need to be in place to prevent remote activity. Interestingly, in the current crisis many regulatory authorities are waiving these rules.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThe problem is that alcohol and financial offices are quite a common mix. My former trading company employer regularly provided enough free wine at the tastings to make driving home a non-option. Of course, they also had fitness for duty rules that forbade us from working after having a drink, which is good.
- cultus 6y agoIt's amazing how our bloated financial industry doesn't even come close to its supposed goal of efficient capital and risk allocation, but it is instead a huge source of unnecessary risk through nonsense like this. However, it makes a few people a lot of money, which is all that matters.
- 1-6 6y agoIt's amazing how much power one man would wield.
- badfrog 6y ago> a huge source of unnecessary risk through nonsense like this What is the risk illustrated here? A trading firm losing a few million dollars isn't a big deal in terms of the overall global economy.
- xwdv 6y agoWhat would you have people do instead?
- smabie 6y agoIf it's so inefficient, it should be pretty trivial to make superior risk-adjusted returns, no? The reality is that most markets are brutally efficient, as any trader would attest to. The notable exception (at least in my view) is VC. Also, I wouldn't consider the financial industry bloated, at least not any more than other industries. How would you like the industry to be structured?
- tempsy 6y agoThere’s nothing efficient about the equities market right now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mcrae 6y agoThe brilliant thing about financial markets is that anyone can put their money where their mouth is. If you believe you've spotted some inefficiency, then put up some cash and enjoy your spoils.
- eximius 6y ago> If it's so inefficient, it should be pretty trivial to make superior risk-adjusted returns, no? With equal access to market opportunities, maybe.
- dthakur 6y ago> "a good man who did a stupid thing" Amazing that changing bits in some databases can change one's life dramatically.
- LeoTinnitus 6y agoI was listening to a podcast recently where a guy was joking about how felony Duis don't matter in the US. He said his company wanted to hire this girl but they said they wanted to know if she had any felonies to which she said yes, a DUI or something. They laughed at it in the interview and then hired her right away. Goes to show people sorta understand when it comes to alcohol it's not really their fault in the couple one off scenarios.
- blahbhthrow3748 6y agoDUIs are super serious, I would consider that a major lapse in judgement. US culture is fucked
- yellowapple 6y agoI mean, it depends on how recent it was. Last decade? We all make mistakes when we're young, so who am I to judge. Last week? Yeah, no way in hell I'm hiring you.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoIt only increases the relative probability of a fatal crash by 6-20 times (as of the 1970’s, according to DOT, .10-.15 BAC). So it’s basically the same as taking multiple trips. If you take some care in route selection, or drive at 2:00 am when nobody is on the road, or drive from the pub around the corner, it’s less risky than that.
- Swenrekcah 6y agoNobody's on the road except some unlucky person that the drunkard runs head first into. Plenty of examples of that.
- botwriter 6y agoWe've all woken up the next morning and gone, "oh fuck what did I do last night!" This takes it to a whole new level!
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> Beginning at 1:22 a.m. (UTC+1) on 30 June 2009, while still blacked-out, Perkins traded 7 million bbl (1.1 million m3), worth $500 million (£340 million); at times this represented 69% of the volume of oil then being traded[1][2] and ten times the average trade volume. He made his last trade at 3:41 a.m., approximately two and a half hours later.[3] My intuition is that a disproportionate amount of stupid decisions in the world take place between Midnight and 6 AM local time.
- NickNameNick 6y agoI knew a guy who used to work for a european market-making bank. He said a major part of is job had been helping the overnight traders in New York unwind their trades when they sobered up.
- philwelch 6y agoYeah, there’s an old saying, “nothing good happens after midnight”.
- tamaharbor 6y agoIf he would have pressed the other button, he would have made millions and become a trading legend.
- kstrauser 6y agoThere's an important lesson there for all of us: the guy screwed up majorly, but the systems in place let him. If our own systems don't protect our company from a drunk senior dev at 2AM pushing code to the master branch and deploying it, then we're really no better than his employer was. I used to dislike how restrictive some policies can feel. Now I can appreciate that at least some of those policies protect me by making it hard for me to exercise poor decision making without my coworkers signing off on it. (Note: "some". "Security theater" is still very much a thing, but turns out that not all pain-in-the-neck controls are there just to be annoying.)
- nonbirithm 6y agoI once brought this up to someone because the databases we used for testing were sitting in our organization's resource group to be modified globally, and I wanted to ensure there was a backup in case we messed up something, or at least restrict access to our team. The data went back years and there was no clear way if reproducing it if something went wrong. He said no, and didn't allow me to, on the basis that you're being trusted to work here, so you're also being trusted not to mess with anything you don't need to. Therefore we didn't have to limit access to anyone. I felt that was missing the point since there could also be accidents.
- downerending 6y agoEarly in my career, I wanted "root" on every system I could possibly have it on, and often bristled if I didn't get it. Late in my career, when someone asks me if I want "root", I often decline. There's a lot to be said for limiting one's exposure to those risks and having solid plausible deniability if someone hoses some crucial system. (Not to mention being "unable" to access a lot of systems at 3am to help fix messes someone else made.)
- kstrauser 6y agoAbsolutely! I found out I still had access to my account for a previous employer on some random industry website when my 1Password autofilled the login and it worked. I contacted my old boss and asked him to immediately remove my access, and confirmed that I couldn't get in anymore. The last thing I want is for something to change or break, and for them to say "hey, that's funny, our old employee is still logging in..." I actively don't want to have access on things I don't need.
- Apocryphon 6y agor/wallstreetbets should revere him as their patron saint
- downerending 6y agoJust discovered this sub last week. If you're into autistic gallows humor, especially during these wild times, some of it is pretty damn funny. (My Series 7, though, doesn't recommend doing anything like what they're doing.)
- bawana 6y agoSo what do we call it when an algo trading event results in the same - 'oil futures algo bug trading incident'?